His Obsession
by swaqdanny
Summary: It's Easter time in Amity Park, and Phantom's past is coming back to haunt him. Dark AU. One-shot.


**I was writing something related to Easter, and then this came out. And it's nothing like I thought it would be. & it's so against my nature. I'm kind of scared of myself now.  
**

**I do not own Danny Phantom, those rights are held by Nickelodeon and Butch Hartman.**

* * *

To say that the old church on Main St was packed this early morning would be an understatement. Humans had walked and searched for seats, spots in pews, and chairs – anything to solidify their attendance. Attendance for one of the most important masses that happens every year for Christians everywhere.

The floor looked like a rainbow; bright colored dresses and suits cluttered close together in pinks, yellows, purples, and greens, making more room as more color entered the church from under the giant stain glass window. It was divided into four parts; one of their Messiah's birth, one of him teaching, the third of his crucifixion, and finally, his rebirth. No light passed through the colored glass to cast the image upon the floor of the church to illuminate the crowd.

Heat from their bodies escaped and warmed the church, causing all of them to sweat – except for the one boy, who was sitting far above them in the rafters. He looked around seventeen, his tall six foot two figure somewhat looming as he peered from where he was sitting, legs aimlessly swaying. White hair, still kept short in the back, swept around his head, traveling down to his eyebrows. Stray hairs fell in line with his piercing green eyes, and from out of the white cloak he was wearing came his gloved hand, brushing them aside. He still wore the same black and white HAZMAT suit underneath the cloak – it was a part of him, after all. His own body. His identity.

It was the only thing that kept him in remembrance of his past life. Sure, he still had the memories, still knew what he had done, still had his regrets. His regret to tell his parents the secret. The regret of not having the balls to have any sort of relationship with one of the two girls he actually loved. The regret of ever having a normal life.

He mentally smacked himself for the last one, as the tune of Jacquet de Berchem's _O Jesu Christe_ floated up towards him. The tune that always brought forward the memories of himself. His life. What would have it been like if he hadn't stepped into that portal? Would he have liked it? He always told himself that he probably would, but what if in some alternate reality, the life he could have had also slapped himself for not stepping into the portal? For not becoming a half ghost? For not being able to make a change, stop evil, protect his world. Would the car accident still have happened if it wasn't for that deciding event?

_Protect_. He sighed at the word; talk about a double-edged blade. His obsession might have offered the help and defense that Amity's society needed while he was still with them. When they still needed him. He might have saved the world multiple times, to protect those in need, but in the end he couldn't protect himself. He couldn't protect himself even as those headlights from a drunk driver swerved into his lane, going 70 in a 35, one block away from his home. Couldn't protect himself just by phasing out of his car as soon as he saw what was about to happen. He hadn't had thought involuntarily about himself. His obsession didn't apply to himself.

And so he only had his conscious, floating in a void for some period of time as he listened to the inaudible murmurs and felt the vibrations of motion. He knew he was not alone, his floating conscious could feel an outward body in the room. But, damn, he felt empty. Really empty.

He had stopped wondering for a while, stopped even bothering to think about what was going on. He was only concentrated on the void that he knew shouldn't be empty. He didn't feel the warmth. He didn't feel cold, either. He had just become… indifferent to neural stimulus.

The only time he stopped feeling the void during this time was when his vision finally came back. When time started moving again.

He was lying on the floor, curled up into a ball. Memories started to flood back in, each of them never turning down the mind aisle where the void resided. None of them seemed to belong there. Everything had come back. But the void was still there, even if it wasn't as noticeable as before. That's when he thought, '_Why am I on the floor?'_

He slowly sat up, but pain raced across his body. He remembered the accident before he entered that timeless realm; he remembered the instant, searing pain as those headlights connected with his vehicle's own. But the pain was gone in a flash, surely it hadn't –

He stopped thinking. The void loomed over everything in his mind. His human half had been destroyed. Dead.

The boy sitting in the rafters never once felt his mentor's presence push up against his side, sitting next to him as he watched the procession below.

"It wasn't wise for you to leave, Phantom."

It had been his own choice to avoid his past identity. He had only watched the events that took place after the accident. The rivers of tears that poured out of every window in the Fenton house. The shutting down of the ghost portal. Tucker becoming too immersed into technology to ever call him back to reality. Sam giving up her individualistic ideas, trying to distract herself from anything that could lead to her almost suicide. She had already attempted twice.

The school didn't help her cause either. A memorial had been built in the football trophy case, removing all of its district and state awards for the kid whom nobody seemed to like. The kid that bailed on them while saving their parents during a ghost attack. The kid that was always late to class.

Somehow, this kid was what kept the school running so effortlessly, despite the bullying problem. Mr. Lancer didn't show up to the school for weeks, not being able to look at the now empty desk by the window. Nobody talked at lunch. Dash had quit playing football. Paulina stopped caring about how she looked. Even Valerie hadn't been seen flying around in her Red Huntress suit. In fact, it seemed as the whole student body, faculty, and the community just… shut down.

Nobody had died in years. Even when the ghosts came, Danny Phantom was always there to stop them from causing true havoc, true casualties. Sure, there was property damage, but as if money could be compared to a human life.

In fact, the ghost boy seemed to have disappeared when the Fenton died. So did the ghosts. So how did one boy stop all the problems the town has had for two and a half years?

This was why he never came back. Never appearing before Tucker, Sam, or Jazz, just to let him know he still existed. Because the best thing to do for them was to let them go.

Clockwork, fortunately, accepted his request. He knew of the teen's trouble in the ghost zone, his unfamiliarity with this alternate universe. He had to know just what made the ghost zone tick. He had to know this if he was to be the King.

It was a shock for everyone except Clockwork and the Observants. The boy, however, was the most resilient. He tried to get away from the time master the best he could, but the current injuries had kept him from going far. He bled ectoplasm, with no signs of the red iron that he used to call blood. This was his blood now. This was his new reality.

He fell again ten feet from where he began, too exhausted to continue. Cuts on his face and body still leaking. Bones still broken from the impact, from his eviction out the car onto the road. His brain still fuzzy from its impact with his skull. That was the killing blow. Not the deep bloody lines. Not the rib cage broken, near stabbing his heart and lungs. Just a slap of the brain against its protective skull.

And so, even against the feeble struggle, Clockwork picked the boy up, laid him on a ghostly sofa, and began teaching him. Years of teachings crammed into seven months. Seven months to have the boy ready for coronation. True, Dark Phantom still lingered in all elder ghosts' minds, but the future had changed. The Dark Phantom they knew was no more. But then again, a future that led to a second Pariah Dark in the form of a smaller, even stronger seventeen year old. Stronger than Pariah, even if the past king had both the Ring of Rage and the Crown of Fire in his possession when the showdown happened.

But it never will. The sarcophagus was removed from the decaying castle, moved to a deep freeze, to a place that only the ghost yeti Frostbite, Clockwork, and the High Council knew about. One slip would lead to spontaneous death of the speaker and anyone listening.

The teen tried to leave again, the night before his seventeenth birthday. The night before his coronation. He knew why now. It was like a trap – if he hadn't defeated the Ghost King, Pariah would have destroyed the world. Since he did though, he would now become the champion of ghosts, the King. These were the only two outcomes, as Pariah was never smart enough to think in other directions except slaughter.

He was seventeen, damn it! He wasn't even really seventeen, either, as time had stopped his aging through his passing. Seventeen was the year they would have told the _halfa _he was to be the King. They would have given him one year to finish high school, and in the same one year learn the culture and rules of the zone. The King had to know all.

But he had become full ghost. He had no more ties to the human world. He was lost. _Unaware_. Did the boy know of the power he now possessed after becoming a full ghost?

Of course not. The naïve Phantom didn't even try to form a portal during his escape, let alone teleport to the front door. Forming one would have been so easy of him to do. The ease of escaping into the human world. Maybe even into a different world all together.

He knew of his new power, though. He had shaken in his sleep because of it. It felt so much like when he first developed his ice powers. Except inside, he was burning up. It was melting him alive. He let loose of it once. It burned white. It burned him.

And the burn felt _good_.

How pain could cause such relief. The red had appeared in his eyes, laughing evilly like his voice did as he blasted and blasted at the mountains below, each of them disappearing, vaporized. Clockwork had kept him from going too far, though. He knew this would happen. And he helped the Phantom control the urge. He helped him in more ways than both could even imagine. Clockwork wasn't a mentor anymore. He was Phantom's father.

And so like a father should, he went out into the Zone, looking for his lost son. He knew the Observants had found out – he could see them looking everywhere as well. Some even came up and cursed him for letting the boy loose again. The cursed themselves for letting the public know that Phantom was about to be crowned their king as well. Riots from the ghosts that hated the boy, led by that mechanical hunter and their own prison ward, ensued everywhere.

But Clockwork knew where his Phantom was. He had seen so. He froze time. He froze the riots. He froze the Observants. He froze everything.

He floated to the mechanical hunter's, Skulker's, island. He landed in front of a cave carved into the purple rock, hidden from view because of the dead tree branches and shrubbery. He brushed it aside and went inside, finding Phantom frozen in half sob, face buried in his knees that were pulled to his chest.

Clockwork pulled a time medallion out and placed it on his child's head. The teen became animated again, his sobs regaining sound and his body shaking violently. He wasn't speaking however. He wasn't even surprised when out of the corner of his leaking eye he saw Clockwork there in front of him. They both sat in silence until Clockwork placed a hand on the boy's shoulder.

He was taken down by a fierce hug, with more crying into his chest. And the words spilled out. The words inside the now dead child's mind that have been aching to get out. Words that were never said, words that were the destroyer of his conscious. Words that let him know that the void was still there.

That was eighteen years ago. Now, the child, much mentally older, sat in silence as he stared down at the people, showing no emotion as Clockwork's hand snaked its way around the boy's cloaked body to his opposite shoulder. All he did was twist the green skull that wrapped around his left hand's ring finger. He could still feel the crown resting on his head, underneath the cloak's hood that he had slipped over his head when he teleported here.

They felt much like the chains the boy was bound to during the ceremony, so he wouldn't escape during coronation. The sight certainly hushed many of the rioters, as they watched his defiant spirit struggle throughout the event, trying hard, to no avail, to get away from it all. He knew he was no leader. He couldn't ever lead those that were with him anyways. All that the ghosts knew was that the symbol of do-gooder's everywhere, the boy that always tried to bring them misery, was as totally against this as much as they were. They could only watch silently as the ring was forced onto his finger, and the crown pushed down onto his head. He stopped struggling then, eyes dulling as he realized he could no longer escape this fate.

"Why," they asked. "Why does the twerp who isn't anything like us become our king?"

"Because of his obsession." An observant replied, noticing the spirit of the boy die. "Because of his need to protect. Because he _is_ you. He died just seven months ago."

"The human world still calls me, Clockwork." The boy says finally. He still stares at the retreating church below. Stares at the family and friends that stayed in their pews, praying. The original three. "I can't stop it. It's been eighteen years, and they still haven't forgotten me. Still won't let go. It's my fault." Sadness radiates from those toxic eyes. "I want to destroy myself for causing this."

"You can't change the pass, it will only destroy today."

"I know that."

"Then why not start by changing the present?"

The boy only shook his head. "I can't do that. It's too late."

"It's never too late to fix a fault."

"You can't fix being dead!" The teen whispered angrily, his eyes flashing to the evil blood red. Clockwork only squeezed his shoulder in comfort, and the boy relaxed. Blinking, his eyes became the median of his control. "Besides," he continues on sadly. "They have children now."

"You have shown yourselves to them."

"Because they soon grow up, and believe me just to be a figment of imagination from their childhood. They only know Phantom. They will forget."

"Have them tell their parents about Phantom."

"Do you think that I have not at least tried that? Any name mentioning me or my past life will only bring another depression, Clockwork. Fate has let me see them so. I can't. It's too late for change."

Clockwork only sighed, and too stared at the remaining families as they got up and left the church, conversing. Jasmine Fenton was now thirty seven, renowned psychologist and married to a brain doctor she had met at Harvard. She was visiting her parents with him and their two children – an older brother and a younger sister. The genders were completely switched, but Phantom could still see that the two had the same relationship he and Jasmine had when they were kids. The son looked out for his sister. Always.

Tucker Foley was there, too. He still wore glasses, but ditched the red beret. His hair was crew cut just like his wife Valerie's dad. Human Phantom's best friend. Clockwork wondered if Tucker ever told the Red Huntress, that was now his wife, and their son, Phantom's secret. He doubted it – but with Phantom 'officially' gone from existence, he had to tell Valerie some other way for her to give up finding him. But he wouldn't tell anyone else. Would he?

And then there was Samantha Manson. Sam. He knew his son had loved her. And she loved him as well – and still did. She was unmarried and dressed in black. Unusual for the time of the year, but she had to find something to remember her Phantom.

He looked back at Phantom to see that he had indeed left. He did. Clockwork teleported outside, watching the three adult's converse as the younger children played off in the distance.

* * *

"Hey Harmony!"

"Phanty!"

Jazz's youngest daughter had stopped playing with the boys, who went off in a different direction. She was looking at some flowers when Phantom appeared sitting next to her. She hugged him excitedly.

"Easy, easy!" A gleam had returned to his eyes. "You don't want your parents to find out, do you?"

Harmony's eyes went huge. "No!" she said a little too loudly, causing Jazz to look at her. Phantom had went invisible when she said no, knowing it would attract attention.

"Harmony, what's wrong dear?"

"Nothing, mommy! I'm just playing!"

Jazz gave one last look at her daughter before turning back to conversation.

"That was close." Phantom appeared again, smiling at Harmony. But there were tears in her eyes.

"You almost went bye. I caused you to go bye!" She started crying.

Phantom tried to hush her. "No, no, it's okay, don't cry!" But it was too late. He didn't realize that it had caught the attention of the parent's again.

"Harmony? Are –" Jazz froze as she turned around. There was her daughter. And there was _Phantom_. It had to be him. There could be no other possibility! It would explain so much though, how the kids always never really talked about what happened during their Easter vacations. Was he seeing them? Why not us? Why not me?

Realizing that the ghost hadn't heard her, she slowly walked up behind him. It was him, alright. Even though the cloak was new, the jumpsuit was the same. The hair was the same. The _eyes_ were the same.

"Danny?"

He froze. No. No no no no no no no.

He slowly turned around to see his sister behind him. And everyone else looking at him too. Looks of surprise, shock, happiness, anger. It was too much.

"Phantom!?" Valerie shouted. "What the hell! It's been eighteen years and _now _you finally decide to show up!? Where were you! Danny!" Crap. She knew too. "WHERE. WERE. YOU!"

Tucker was silent, unable to speak, even though the words kept forming on his mouth. Jazz's face was unreadable, as always. It's what happens when you become that good at psychology, being able to read a person before they can understand your first emotion.

Sam was the worst, though. Her eyes, her _eyes_. They were killing Phantom again. He never wanted to come back to this life. Her _eyes_. They were torture. The anguish, the sadness, the fear. He could feel the accident happening all over again.

"I shouldn't have come." Phantom whispered, lowering his hood. They all gasped, remembering the artifacts. "I shouldn't have even left the ghost zone."

"Why do you have those Danny!" Valerie yelled. She was doing most of the talking today. She still hated him to, it seems like. Guess she didn't really forgive him after all. "Do you know what kind of power that gives!"

"The King does, Valerie Foley." Clockwork appeared. The all gaped at Phantom, but he only disappeared.

"King!?" Valerie spat. "We've been suffering for eighteen years, half the town has, and he's become _King_?"

"You act like he had a choice in either of those choices, Mrs. Foley." Clockwork replied smoothly, making Valerie flush in embarrassment. "His only decision was to stay away."

"But why!?" Sam cried out. "I love him! And I know he loves me! So what if he's a ghost, we'll still accept him."

"But everyone else? You four are the only ones that know the truth. Half of the people blamed Phantom for Daniel's death, not saving him. He has more enemies than ever in the Human World. He stayed away because he thought it was best for you to forget about him. _To move on_. That's what he wanted all of you to do. Yet you don't. Even after eighteen years, his death affects him. His new power affects him. And most importantly, _you guys_ affect him. Daniel might have been fine after a while if he was forgotten. But you didn't. So he began visiting your children, hoping that they might let it slip that they've seen him. To ease your minds for good, knowing he's still present. They were _too_ good with their promises, never telling you guys, even after both Dylan Fenton and Harrison Foley both believed he was just a figment of their imagination."

He sighed, and a tear fell from his eyes. He stared at the four adults with defeated eyes. "He was stuck at seventeen forever. He was stuck being the new ghost king forever. He was stuck with having the obsession to protect everyone he sees. He was stuck knowing _he _was the cause of all your anguish. You know what that did to his obsession? It made him want to kill himself. To deal with the problem. I hope that you realize that even though it looked like Phantom abandoned you, he didn't. He was keeping you safe. He was keeping all of us safe."

And with that Clockwork disappeared too, leaving the adult's stupefied. "We're not having that egg hunt today, are we?"

* * *

Phantom stood in the bedroom of his castle. He had his old pictures scattered around him, his old memories. His old life. He had nothing of it now. Yet it wouldn't let go. He needed to be free from his curse, free from causing this pain upon those he loved.

Staring at a picture of Danny and the four other adults when they were kids, Phantom started to cry again. He pulled out the glowing green dagger from under his cloak as he sat on his bed, looking at the mirror across from him, thinking about the stained glass window. Ironic, isn't it, how the man in that stained glass window foreshadowed his entire life and he didn't even know it; how he had passed under the scenes after church services the same night of the accident. However, not even the stained glass window could predict this would happen.

"Happy Easter." He sang out, before the time of peace, protection, and prosperity in the Ghost Zone came to an end; their Messiah's lifeless body lying on the cold, hard ground.

* * *

**...**

**don't kill me.**


End file.
